Artipedia - Arts News

West of Rome

Cindy Sherman, Untitled, 1977/2008.
Black and white photograph.
Courtesy of the artist, West of Rome,
Los Angeles, and Metro Pictures, New York.

WOMEN IN THE CITY

Featuring works by Jenny Holzer, Louise Lawler, Barbara Kruger, and Cindy Sherman

Organized by Emi Fontana, Curator and Founder, West of Rome
Opening throughout Los Angeles
February 9, 2008
http://www.womeninthecity.org

Curator and gallerist Emi Fontana launches the new public art non-profit organization West of Rome and its first public art initiative, Women in the City, a viral art exhibition featuring works by renowned female artists Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, and Cindy Sherman. On view throughout Los Angeles beginning February 9, 2008, Women in the City appropriates traditional methods of advertising and promotion as well as places works in unique settings to create a public exhibition of works by four international leaders of the feminist movement in contemporary art. Timed to coincide with the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, a major moment in L.A.’s cultural history, Women in the City is on view at over 50 locations from Venice Beach to Pasadena and activates the relationship between art and the urban experience while investigating trends in consumerism and the language of popular culture.

Holzer, Kruger, Lawler, and Sherman belong to the first generation of female artists that were embraced by the international art system; in the early 1980s, this was a historical breakthrough never seen before in the history of art. In the same time period, theories about gender, cultural identities, and the gaze were further defining the idea of post-feminism, differentiating it from the historical feminism of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Once women in the western world achieved fundamental rights and deconstructed patriarchal cultural discourses, they were finally able to construct themselves as icons and to exercise the power of their own gaze.

Appealing to a contemporary “flaneur,” the person who contemplates the city while casually exploring urban modernity, Women in the City showcases works at highly visible sites typically used for advertising — billboards, LED screens, marquees, promotional stickers, and wild postings — that cater to the unique landscape of Los Angeles’ vehicle and pedestrian traffic. At these chosen media sites, which include The Standard, Downtown, L.A., Hollywood & Highland Center, billboards on Sunset Boulevard, and wild postings from Venice Beach to Pasadena, among other locations, the works of art are camouflaged in L.A.’s landscape, which creates a deliberate interaction between art and urban life, and, more conceptually, between authenticity and commodification. True to the nature of West of Rome, Women in the City activates this important relationship between art and the city.

SUPPORT
Women in the City is made possible by generous support provided by François Pinault Foundation, The Broad Art Foundation, and the Pasadena Arts Council.

Women in the City is produced with the help of partners including American Cinematheque, Background Images, the City of Pasadena Art and Culture Commission, the City of West Hollywood’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission, ForYourArt, Hollywood & Highland Center, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, Internationalist Marketing/TheBooth.net, LA Weekly, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum/ of/ Traffic, National Promotions & Advertising, Primary Color, the Roosevelt Hotel, The Standard Hotel, Downtown, L.A.

ABOUT WEST OF ROME
West of Rome, initiated in 2005, is an ongoing project throughout Los Angeles conceived and organized by Emi Fontana. It consists of a series of contemporary art exhibitions, public installations and events that activate the relationship between the audience and the city. The dynamic nature of the various sites, which exist according to conditions specified by invited artists, reinforces the collective experience often lost in traditional gallery or museum exhibitions.

For information on specific locations, dates, and hours, and updates on upcoming events, visit http://www.womeninthecity.org

University of California,
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Enrique Chagoya, When Paradise Arrived, 1988;
charcoal and pastel on paper;
80 x 80 in.; di Rosa Preserve,
Napa, California. Photo: Wolfgang Dietze,
courtesy of Gallery Paule Anglim Copyright: Enrique Chagoya

Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia
February 13 - May 18, 2008

University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
2626 Bancroft Way, Berkeley CA 94720

http://bampfa.berkeley.edu

The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) presents a major, twenty-five-year survey of work by Enrique Chagoya. The exhibition features more than seventy works—paintings, charcoal and pastel drawings, prints, and mixed-media codices (accordion-folded books)—that intermingle icons and cultural references spanning hundreds of years and thousands of miles. Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia runs February 13 through May 18, 2008.

Chagoya’s subject matter reflects his own personal history and interests: Mexico’s complex past, international politics, various religions, art history, and popular culture. He draws on all of these sources, combining cultural symbols to create scenes of hybrid worlds and scathing—and often humorous—political and social satire. According to the artist, “Humankind is in constant war with itself, perfectly capable of total destruction. This is the raw material for my art.”

Chagoya borrows from the canon of Western art, adapting works by Francisco Goya and Philip Guston (satirizing, respectively, Napoleon’s invasion of Spain and the Nixon administration) to contemporary political contexts (the Reagan and current administrations).

Chagoya’s work also places icons from the dominant Western culture within Indigenous or colonial settings, so that Superman faces off with an Aztec god, or cannibals run amok in Monet’s gardens at Giverny. Chagoya has described this world of intermingled influences as a place where “all cultures meet and mix in the richest ways, creating the most fertile ground for the arts ever imagined.”

Born in Mexico City in 1953, Chagoya regularly visited the museums of the capital city and Teotihuacán as a child. These cultural institutions provided him with his first exposure to pre-Columbian culture. He moved to the United States in 1979 and in 1984 he enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he created the powerful work that begins this mid-career survey exhibition. In 1986 he completed an MA, and in 1987 an MFA, at the University of California, Berkeley. Chagoya has taught printmaking at Stanford University since 1995. His work is included in the collections of many major museums, including the Library of Congress Print Collection and the National Museum of American Art, Washington DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, Mexico; Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; The Art Institute of Chicago; a
nd the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Public Programs
Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia will include a wide array of public programs that highlight the ways in which Chagoya’s art engages with a diverse range of disciplines. The programs include an artist’s lecture by Chagoya, an interdisciplinary panel on border issues, and a reading and discussion between Chagoya and writer Victor Martinez.

Credit line
Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia is organized by the Des Moines Art Center. The exhibition is sponsored by the Lannan Foundation and Principal Financial Group Foundation, Inc.; additional support is provided by The Jacqueline & Myron Blank Exhibition Fund. Support for the catalog has been provided by George Adams Gallery, Gallery Paule Anglim, and Stanford University. This exhibition is curated by Patricia Hickson, Des Moines Art Center curator and downtown gallery manager. The presentation at BAM/PFA is coordinated by Lucinda Barnes, chief curator and director of programs and collections.

University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
2626 Bancroft Way, Berkeley CA 94720
http://bampfa.berkeley.edu

Gallery Hours:
Wednesday to Sunday, 11 to 5.
Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Information:
t. (510) 642-0808
f. (510) 642-4889
TDD: (510) 642-8734

Press contact
Jonathan L. Knapp jlknapp@berkeley.edu

CENTRO CULTURAL MONTEHERMOSO KULTURUNEA

CENTRO CULTURAL MONTEHERMOSO KULTURUNEA
Fray Zacarías Martínez, 2. 01001
Vitoria-Gasteiz. SPAIN

http://www.montehermoso.net

MONTEHERMOSO 08 Art and Research Grants

The Centro Cultural Montehermoso Kulturunea, in accordance with its desire to support creation and research in contemporary art and thought, announces a call for entries for a series of grants. The objective of this initiative, which is promoted by the Vitoria-Gasteiz City Council, is to facilitate the production of thirteen selected projects in the following categories: Art Project Production, Curatorship, Research and Film Scripts. Authors of any nationality, regardless of age, can present their projects individually
or collectively.

ART PROJECT PRODUCTION
Eight grants will be awarded for art projects to be produced during the duration of the grant. Each grant shall not exceed 10,000 Euros, including a maximum amount of 7,000 Euros for production of the project and 3,000 Euros for fees and copyrights. The work produced will be exhibited at the Montehermoso Cultural Centre within its 2009 programme.

CURATORSHIP
One grant will be awarded for a curated exhibition project involving the participation of at least four contemporary artists. The selected project shall be exhibited at the Montehermoso Cultural Centre within its 2009 program. The proposal must be currently in production or produced during the duration of the grant. The exhibition project award shall not exceed 15,000 Euros, and 6,000 Euros shall be allocated for fees and copyright. The budget submitted must include the costs of production, installation, insurance and transportation as well as travel and accommodation expenses for selected artists and the curator. Infrastructure, technical equipment and human resources will be provided by the Montehermoso
Cultural Centre.

RESEARCH
Three grants will be awarded for research projects related to Contemporary Art and Thought. Within this section, at least one of the grants shall be devoted to a project related to the development of a Historiography of Feminist Art in Spain. The award for the research project shall not exceed 9,000 Euros. This amount includes the researcher’s fees, as well as project development expenses. The Montehermoso Cultural Centre will be able to suggest publication of the research.

FILM SCRIPTS
One grant will be awarded for development of a film script project. The award for development of the film script project shall not exceed 9,000 Euros. This amount is to include the researcher’s fees as well as project development expenses.

For further information
(download of full requirements)
http://www.montehermoso.net
info@montehermoso.net

2007 Selected Projects:
Curatorship: “Terms of use”, Lisa Rosendahl (lives and works in Berlin).

Artists: Boris Achour (Paris), “Conatus: conversion”; Miren Arenzana (London), “Sweet dreams”; Amaia González Reyes (Pontevedra), “Osadia S:T (quiero ser un poco como On Kawara)”; Adriá Juliá (Los Angeles), “Indicios para otro lugar”; Loreto Martínez Troncoso (Paris), “pero dónde esta(i)s físicamente?”; Amalia Pica (Amsterdam), “Robinson Crusoe”; Miguel Ángel Rebollo (Madrid), “PLAY rebollo”; Tere Recarens (Berlin), “Kultur Karma”.

Research: Itxaro Delgado (Vitoria-Gasteiz); Garbiñe Larralde (Pamplona); Jason Rowan (Barcelona).

Bilawal Bhutto

Henry Procter, award winning artist working within the frame of
political activism, is staging an event this Valentine’s Day, February 14th 2008, at the
University of Brighton. The artist’s new work entitled ‘The Mass Media
Reader’ is a sculptural tower of multiple images of Bilawal Bhutto, son
of the late Benazir Bhutto.

The stack is made from thousands of identical images and gives a new
form to the political portrait. Printed on newsprint using standard
lithograph plate, the image of Bilawal occupies the entire newspaper
front page.

The artist’s choice of Bilawal Bhutto signifies an image in waiting, an
image yet to be widely distributed. Bilawal Bhutto inherited leadership
of the Pakistan People’s Party from his mother Benazir Bhuto following
her assassination last month. Bilawal is currently a student at Oxford
University and student status affords him a degree of privacy, however
public consumption awaits.

Procter’s stack considers who owns the image and who will be most
influential in determining what it signifies. The artist argues that
the images unfurled around us can be a mistake. Our ability to be
subjective is only good enough when formed independently. It could be
said that an image within the media takes part in an
auto-contextualisation. The context for the understanding of that image
is provided by its accompanying headline and editorial copy; the
political slant of that said media. The artist asks, whose subjectivity
is being supplanted in ‘the mass-media reader’? By contrast an artist
paints not to repeat an image, but to paint anew. By acting on an image
that is yet to be standard currency, Procter hopes to create a space
for understanding and interpretation that he believes is not working
under the guise of a mass media project. For his stack, the artist
deliberately chose an image of Bilawal as close to blank canvas as he
could find.

Participants at the Valentine’s Day event can take an image away with
them and the artist encourages the bedroom poster to be replaced with
something more meaningful. After a talk given by the artist where the
question ‘Is there any room for difference?’ will be asked the audience
will take part in a debate. The discussion will continue via Henry Procter’s Facebook group, for invitation please email henryprocter@aol.com.

Henry Procter is a final year student on Critical Fine Art Practice at
the University of Brighton; he has exhibited both nationally and
internationally. He was recently awarded the 2007 Nagoya prize, a
four-month residency and exhibition at Gallery Be in Nagoya, Japan.

ends

Is there any room for difference?

2-4pm, February 14th at University of Brighton,
Grand Parade, Brighton
To reproduce the image used please contact Getty images.

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